Frida was a self-taught Mexican painter who started painting as a young woman while recovering from a near-fatal bus accident.

This accident caused her many surgeries and much pain over her lifetime, yet she did not let her physical limitations did stop her from getting what she wanted in life.

She married Diego Rivera, a great, famous Mexican painter twenty years her senior and they had a passionate and tumultuous love affair, which included many affairs – for both of them, getting divorced and later remarrying each other.

Frida said that she had two pains, her physical pain, related to her accident and her emotional pain, related to her relationship with Diego and that the emotional pain was much more difficult.

Her paintings depict both physical and emotional pain, but Frida was strong and resilient and she became a leading figure in modern art.

I believe we have a choice in how we show up in life – whether or not we let our feelings about our circumstances keep us playing small. Frida didn’t let her circumstances stop her. And Isvari has wanted to do Yoga in the piazza of the museum for years, and she accomplished that goal.

I am very glad to have been at this great event last Sunday, celebrating the spirit of going for what you want and experiencing the joy it can bring to others.

by Judi Knight

Chris Guillebeau’s book signing in Atlanta

Many of you know I also run a bed and breakfast and event space called the Urban Oasis and we put on lots of events here throughout the year.  I am the co-chair of WordCamp Atlanta as well, so the topic of event promotion is an important one to me.

We used Social Media to put on a super book signing for Chris Guillebeau’s Art of Nonconformity book tour with over 225 people. And WordCamp Atlanta sold out in two weeks. Event planners should really bone up on all the cool social media apps that come in handy to insure the success of your next events.

When creating an event, you must think about your specific event and create a targeted online and offline marketing plan.

• What are your objectives?
• Who is your target market?
• What channels do people in your target market use?
• How much time do you have?
• What are your resources in terms of time and money?
• What will you need outside assistance with?
• How will you measure results?

Judi speaking at WordCamp Atlanta 2013

Give yourself enough time to make a difference. You will need a minimum of 6 weeks to execute a good plan, but it is better to begin planning and talking it up well before that.

The following is a list of activities you might want to include to get the buzz going about your event and attract your “right” people to attend:

Flyer:

Create a Flyer for the event. Have it professionally designed and use attractive images. Create the flyer in a psd so that you will be able to be able to re-use elements from the flyer on your website and other places.

Website:

1. If the event is going to be recurring make a website for it.
2. If the event is being put on by an ongoing business, create a banner or sidebar widget and put it in a prominent place on the homepage of the business website with a link to a specific page or post about it.
3. Create a landing page for the event (use a program like Premise to create Landing pages on your website).
4. Add a prominent call to action on all online descriptions of your event so that people may register by clicking a link to get to your chosen sign up method.

Registration:

You will need to determine the method for people to sign up for the event. If the event is free and you want people to get a ticket, or if it is a paid event, there are several ways to handle having people sign up that keep track.

1. Create a form in Gravity Forms and link it to your Paypal or Authorize.net account. When someone signs up, you will get an email with his or her sign up form and the money will go into your account.
2. Create a Facebook Event. This is a popular way to publicize an event. Make sure the instructions are clear as to whether they need to register or pay for the event and where to do so. Send out the event to as many people as you can. You can also allow guests to invite their friends to the event. Find out more on the Facebook event instructions page.
3. If you want people to register for your event, whether or not they must pay to attend, EventBrite is a great solution. You can set EventBrite to show a list of attendees as an incentive for people to join people they know in attending and sign up. If you have a website, you can embed the EventBrite sign up right on your site, or it is fine to just provide a link to your posts or landing pages from EventBrite. EventBrite takes a little bit of money out of each registration, but it is free for non-profit or free events.

Use Your List:

1. Create a list of important gatekeepers for people who are in your demographic to be interested in your event, including all of the speakers or volunteers. Send a personal e-mail with a description of the event and why their people might be interested and include a pdf of the flyer. Make the email personal if it is someone you know. Ask the gatekeeper if they think it would be something that their people would be interested in and would they please get the word out to their people by:

• Writing a blog post about it
• Posting it in their newsletter
• Putting a flyer in their studio
• Passing the word around their network on Social Media
• Telling their students, Meetup group, or other contacts about it

2. Send out emails to your mailing list about the event. You can develop a series of these emails to tell people it is coming; to tell them registration is open; to tell them about special features, guests or highlight an activity; and to ask them to share the email with their friends. Be sure you are using an Email Service Provider (I use MailChimp) to send the email with a way for people to unsubscribe rather than sending something by way of your Gmail or Outlook. The email does not need to go out on a fancy template. Sometimes a plain text email gets better result because they feel more personal.

Social Media:

1. Create a #hashtag for the event that can be used on Twitter and other social media sharing to indicate the update is about the event. Check to see that some other group is not using your hashtag by doing a search.

2. Create some embeddable pre-made Tweets with Click to Tweet. Add them to the end of emails, blog posts and other communications so that it is easy for others to share about your event.

3. Create a special Click to Tweet to go on your registration page giving your attendees the option of sharing that they are going to the event. Here’s a example: “ I just signed up for http://Atlanta.2013.WordCamp.org. Hope to see you there, too. #wcatl.”

4. Schedule a series of tweets about the event using Hootsuite or BufferApp.
Change up the words and create fun Tweets to go out several times a day. You cannot just tweet out the same message.

5. Send a message to your contacts on Twitter who have large followings and ask them to share the event. Include a lead-in and the link to more information so they can add a little something and Retweet.

6. Create Facebook Page updates adding a jpg version of the flyer or the event logo to the update. Add some fun lead-in text to entice people to read more. Then add the link in the body of the update. It is free to tag the update post as ‘featured’ so it stays at the top of your Facebook Page posts and spans the two columns.

7. Facebook allows advertisers to re-market to people who have visited specific non-Facebook Pages using Facebook Exchange, also known as FBX ad targeting. This means you can show event ads to Facebook users who visited your Event Page but did not purchase. This can be a very economical way to re-target possible prospects.

8. Make sure your Facebook posts link to somewhere that has the sign up links.

9. Create a post in Google+ with the event logo or photo add a lot of the details and link to the sign up form. Post the update to circles that are made up of people who are in the right demographic or locale for your event.

10.Create a Google+ event. One feature of these events is that when you invite people, Google+ will automatically populate their Google calendar with the event, which will ask them whether they will be attending or not.

Monitor Your Social Media Channels:

1. Keep a close watch on your social media channels. Be sure to thank people for sharing your information.
2. Create a twitter stream of tweets that are using the event hashtag so that you can follow what people are saying about your event. Retweet their tweets and jump in and interact with them.

During The Event:

1.  Create a sign up form, which also states that the attendees will be added to the mailing list.
2.  Bring your business cards.
3.  On the event schedule post all Social Media Follow buttons and include the event #hashtag.
4.  Add the Twitter handles to the participant name badges.
5.  Tell people how to find out more about you and your organization.
6. Create some posts or tweets about the event or speakers and schedule them to go out during the event.
7.  Assign people to live tweet and post about the event.
8.  Ask people in your audience to post their questions through Twitter.
9.  Have a photographer and or videographer and take photos of the attendees as well as the speakers.

After The Event:

1. Post the photos and or videos on your Facebook page and tag as many people as possible.
2. Write a blog post with some highlights and photos and share it to Twitter and Google+.
3. Send out Thank you letters to volunteers and people who helped share the information.
4. Hold a wrap up meeting to look at the results and take notes on what worked and what did not and ideas that you have for the next event.
5. If you are doing a presentation you can post your slides onto Slideshare, or upload your videos to YouTube.

Have you put on an event and used any of these tools or others? Let us know how that went.

by Judi Knight

If you don’t know Houzz, it is an online design magazine that features high resolution photos of cool designs. About a month ago, I was interviewed by one of their writers and then promptly forgot all about it.

My loft on Krog Street is the world headquarters of New Tricks as well as doubling as the Urban Oasis Bed and Breakfast.

I started the Bed and Breakfast in 2009 about the same time that I started New Tricks. Our kids were all grown up and moved on and we had this great space that needed to be shared.

I wasn’t sure I would like it so we kind of tried it out without a lot of fanfare. But it has worked out well as an additional source of income and that helps to take care of our property. Not only that, but we have really great guests.

Last week, we had a guest from Australia who was visiting her daughter in the neighborhood. At the same time, a friend of mine stayed over a few nights while she was avoiding a real life stalker who was actually apprehended at her home on her last night staying with me.

At the same time, we were also hosting Syed Balkhi, editor of WPBeginner, who was in town to speak at the local Bloggers Meetup. I love when we have WordPress folks stay here. I had some great talks with Syed about everything WordPress.

I often get phone calls from telemarketers saying that they could help me get number one in a Google search. I tell them I could do this myself if I wanted to be number one in a Google search, but actually I want the Urban Oasis to be about number 13 so that it appears on the second page.

My strategy here is to be that place people have to hunt a minute to find, and then feel like they have stumbled upon an amazing but well kept secret. This strategy helps to attract our “right” people.

We want people who know they want to experience real living in Urban Atlanta rather than someone who just needs a room.

What I know for sure is. . . there is never a dull moment around here

by Judi Knight

Using email to post to WordPress

With the Post by Email method, you can just email your blog post in. That’s right, you just write an email to a certain custom email address and the subject becomes the Title and the message becomes the body of the post. You can attach images which will go into your post as single images or galleries, if there are multiples. When you are finished, you can assign the post to a category and indicate whether should be saved as a Draft. You push send and Voila, it is done.  Pretty cool huh?

How to Get It

Post by Email is one of the plugins included in JetPack plugin collection by Automattic. Check your Plugins directory and see if you have it installed. The JetPack plugin collection comes installed (but not yet connected) with some WordPress installations. If it is not there you can select Add New, from your plugins dashboard and search for it to download from the WordPress repository.

Configuring Post by Email

Once you have JetPack loaded and activated into your plugins folder:

1. Select it from your Dashboard.
2. Connect it to your WordPress.com account. To do this you must have or get an account with WordPress.com. If you have ever had a WordPress.com blog or use Akismet as your spam prevention program, you already have a WordPress.com user name and password. If you can’t remember your password, put in your email address and select Lost My Password to  get another so you can login.
3. Once logged in, you  have access to the Post by Email plugin and can select Learn More to learn how to use and Configure the plugin. (Note: you also have access to a whole group of  plugins.  Some of my favs in this group are WP-Stats for easy looks at your website statistics right from your WordPress Dashboard and Sharing which lets you select the sharing icons for your readers to use to share your blog posts.)

Using Email to Post to WordPress Blog

You can read through the long instructions but let me give you the Cliff Notes version. After you  connect to WordPress.com and activate the Post by Email plugin:

Get your secret email address:

1. Go to Users —->Your Profile in the Dashboard.
2. Scroll down until you find the Post by Email Section and push the button to Enable it. This will give you a separate email address to use when you’d like to send a post to your site through this method.
3. Save your secret WordPress posting email address in your address book so it will be handy when you are using email to post to WordPress Blog.

Write a Post Using Your Email Editor:

1. Go to Gmail or Outlook or wherever you typically write your emails.
2. Put your secret WordPress email address into the send to field.
3. The subject line will be the Title of your Post. (if you are using a phone and don’t have access to the subject line, put it in the body of the email like this using the special parentheses:
   [title: This is the Title of My Post].
4. Write your post. You can use your normal formatting. If you use an email signature and it has two dashes above the signature — you don’t erase the signature because it will not be added to the post.
5. You can add images the regular way by attaching them to the post. Either single images or multiple ones. Make sure they are the right size before you attach them since they will go in at whatever size they are.
6. To save the post as a Draft. Otherwise when you push send it will go ahead and publish the post to your WordPress site. At the bottom of your post content type:
   [status draft].
7. To add it to a category, at the bottom of your post content type:
   [category Name of Category].

That’s it! Now we have one less excuse not to be able to post more frequently.

Let me know how you like it.

by Judi Knight

Getting testimonials is one of those things. The trick to getting testimonials and recommendations is to ask for them.

It seems simple but then why not do it? I am going to add this step to my website wrap up check list so I make it a part of my work flow. It might be even better if I could get them on video!

Here are a few steps on how to structure a testimonial.

1. Introduce yourself and say what you do.
2. What situation were you dealing with that had you seek out the person or company you are going to recommend?
3. What were the results of your work with this company or individual? It helps to be specific and give concrete examples or even an anecdote.
4. Summarize your overall experience and recommend the person or company. You might want to use one key takeaway.

Make it a Video

Creating short videos is pretty easy. The big trick is to plan not to edit since editing is the hard part and stops people from actually doing or posting them. So if you plan to do your short videos in one take  like you are having a conversation, you will do more of them.
If you happen to make a small mistake then just say, “What I meant is…” and keep going as you would in any conversation.

These days it is fine to have a video that looks a bit off the cuff (although we know it is not going to be totally off the cuff since you will do a little prep work, like making sure you and your background look presentable).

These videos come across more authentic and in that way can beat out a more polished, professional video.

So here goes. These directions are for written for Mac users. The process is similar with a PC but will use Widows Movie Maker and the directions are below.

For Mac users:

1. Open up the application Quicktime Player.
2. Go to File>New Movie Recording or press Option-Command-N.
3. A window will pop up giving you a preview of what your webcam is capturing. Take a couple of minutes to improve the quality of the video preview. Here are a few tips:

• Be aware of lighting. Avoid having bright sources of light behind you or too much screen glow from the computer you’re recording to.
• Fix your hair, put on a little make-up, and wear something appropriate.
•  Move office/room clutter from view and make sure what is included in the frame isn’t distracting and looks decent.

4. Once you have your video preview the way you would like it, hit the red record button and test your audio by starting to talk as you would for your actual video recording. Once you’ve recorded 10-15 seconds of video, stop the video by hitting the stop button. Once you hit the stop button, the video you just recorded will come up. Watch the video, take note of any problems (glare, speaking too loud/soft, speaking too fast/slow, etc.), and in your next attempt, fix these problems.
5. Do several takes of your short video. It is practice and you will probably improve after doing a couple.
6. Every time you stop recording a new video file is made and automatically placed in your User>Movies folder on your computer (usually names Movie Recording.mov). View the takes and pick the best one.
7. Upload the .mp4 or .mov file to YouTube or Vimeo so that you can easily embed the video onto a website.

On a PC use Windows Movie Maker:

1. Once you get things set up as per above, Click the “Red/Record” button to start your video. To save your video click the “Blue/Stop” button.
2. Rename your video and save it in the “My Videos” library.
3. You can preview your on your video timeline by clicking on “Play” button. You can also edit but as I indicated above try to record it in one take so you can use it as is.
4. Save your video Mp4 or .mov file format and upload to YouTube.

by Judi Knight

People who write content on their websites need to make it easy for others to access it and unfortunately, those other people, even if they like your content, will forget to go to your website. It is so true.

Some people have used RSS (really simple syndication) feeds to get your content delivered to a feed reader, like the soon to be discontinued, Google Reader, where they can read your posts or post excerpts along with other blogs they follow.

Other readers prefer to read blog updates in their inbox, but many bloggers don’t have the time to create blog posts and send out newsletters.

The MailChimp RSS-to-Email tool makes it easy for you to send your posts out to your readers in an RSS-driven newsletter so you can spend your time creating your content.  You just publish you content once on your website and then use MailChimp to automatically send it out to your subscribers as often as you’d like.

If you currently have feedburner RSS subscribers, you can export the list of subscribers to a .csv file and import it into a list on MailChimp.

There is a WordPress plugin that can help you create the sign up form as a widget that will go on the sidebar on your website. People can use that to sign up to receive your updates. You can set it to send an email on a schedule of your choosing, every-time you post, once a week or once a month.

When people are getting your blog updates in their in-boxes they are more likely to read them than if the updates go to a feedreader.

Building your list this way allows you to get permission to send out email to your list and that permission is gold.

by Judi Knight

One of these was a well known and much used plugin, Social Media Widget which had some code put into it by someone who was working on it  (accidentally or on purpose, we don’t know.) The code injected links to a spammy PayDay site that you would not have seen, but Google could have black-listed you for.

This was re-mediated fairly quickly and sites could continue to use this plugin after updating it which removed the injected link code.

The second problem was a bigger issue, a brute force attack by bots trying to hack into WordPress sites.

Once they gain access to a site they would inject malicious code which could be activated at any time. Specifically, they were making an assault on sites that were using “admin” as a user name. If you are using “admin” please change it immediately. And check out the tips below as well as instructions on how to change your WordPress user name from “admin”.

8 Tips to Keep Your Site Hacker Safe

1. Back-up your WordPress website files and database. Suggestions are Backup Buddy, VaultPress, BackWPup. You might want to check that you know how to restore your site from a backup and test that your backup method is working. This way, if you are ever in need of restoring your site you will be able to do so.
2. Do not use Admin or an easy password for your WordPress site login. This is the number one reason sites get hacked.
3. Keep your plugins updated. If you have plugins in your folder you aren’t using, delete them.
4. Keep your theme updated and other themes in your theme folder. If you have a lot of themes you are not using delete them.
5. Update your WordPress installation to the latest version.
6. Use a plugin called Limit Login Attempts to set the number of login attempts you can have before WordPress locks you out and you have to wait. This stops your site from being the subject of brute force attacks by bots.
7. You can use a program called Sucuri to monitor your site for malicious activity and if ever infected will clean it for you. It is $89 a year for a single site. You can go to their site and run a test on your site free. And if infected you can sign up and they will clean it for you.
8. If you have multiple test sites on your server, make sure you go in and do these things above on all of your sites.

There are other things you can do depending on your level of activity and the importance of your site. But in most cases, doing the above regularly will keep you in good condition. If you haven’t already done so, check out these instructions on how to change your WordPress user name from “admin”.

by Judi Knight

These automated attacks run a program to target vulnerable WordPress sites. If they can get into the site through “admin” they only have to figure out your password. It is not unusual for people to be using “admin” for their user name and “password” or “1234″  as their password. This is not good, people!

The most common reasons people get hacked are bad username and passwords and not keeping WordPress versions, plugins and themes updated. And unfortunately, these sins often co-occur by people who do not know better.

Many installations of WordPress come with “admin” as the username. Once it has been assigned, it can be a bit tricky to change your username from “admin”.  Here are the steps to change your username from “admin”:

1. Assuming your new username is going to have the same email address, you are going to have to change your current user name’s email address (you can’t create a new username with the same email as one that’s already active). Change your current user’s email to your alternative email address.

2. Add your new username with a secure password.

3. Go to your posts and make sure to change the author on all the posts from your old “admin” author to the username you’ve just created. You can do this quickly by checking all the posts, selecting to bulk edit them, and change the author.

4. Delete your old username with name “admin”.

by Judi Knight

What are some words that describe the people you are writing to? The more specific you can be in understanding your niche, the better you will be in targeting your content to their particular needs.

You may want to consider a broader scope for your newsletter than you do for your website, so that it appeals to people who may not actually be in the market for your product now, but maybe later or maybe they will refer customers to you. For example, realtors who only send out news of their latest listings and house-hunting tips are missing an opportunity to stay in contact with a broader audience. The realtor’s list may be interested in continuing to get their agent’s newsletter, even though they have now bought their house, if it contained, for example, neighborhood news and events.

Although my primary business focus is WordPress Website design, the focus of my newsletter is more on Social Media. That allows me to appeal to a broader audience that may eventually need a website or would refer others to me. If I only featured WordPress tips, I would be speaking more to the DIY audience who would be less likely to need my services.

Often people unsubscribe to your list once their initial need is satisfied. However, if you broaden the scope of your audience and provide content that they really appreciate, you will keep their interest and engagement over time. This broader group will either come to do business with you again or refer people to you because they have gotten to know, like and trust you.

But remember you won’t appeal to everyone, so don’t try. The more focused your niche the better.

Describe your readers, audience, clients, tribe:

Age: __________________

Sex:___________________

Industry:_______________

Background:_____________

Interests: _______________

Pain Points: _____________

Brainstorm a list of the types of information they would they like to receive.________________

What are your ideas? Please share them for feedback!

by Judi Knight

To anyone who is perseverating over launching whatever it is they are working on, I say, “Get over your self and just do it!”

Perfect is not the goal here. It is best to keep things simple and get the job done. And then spend time making it work. Make a name for what you do and what you stand for. Show ‘em what you’ve got.

The single most important factor in becoming good at something is not in the learning; it is in the doing. The quicker you can get it done, the quicker you’ll be sharing your passion with the world and building a sense of community around your business.

And the thing is, most people will not even notice the difference between good enough and perfect.

by Judi Knight